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26 March 2014

The "Nasa collapse study" controversy: some thoughts

After my article on a new study of civilisational
collapse part-funded by NASA went viral and global last week, the web has been
afire with all sorts of controversy and debate, some useful, some not so.

Lessons
learned?

Clearly,
the mere mentioning of a "Nasa-funded study" of "civilisational
collapse" in my headline was enough to spark massive interest, but also
didn't help with the ensuing headlines off the back of my original piece, to
the effect that the study - an independent research project - was assumed by
many to be a NASA directed project.

As I
pointed out here, the creation of the HANDY model
designed to explore various scenarios of civilisational collapse, integral to
the new study, was indeed pursued with NASA funding. This certainly added
credibility to it in my eyes.

However,
as a fellow environment journalist Stephen Leahy pointed out to me the other
day on Twitter, although he agreed with the substance of my articles on this,
he felt it was inaccurate to refer to the study simply as
"NASA-sponsored" - he would've specified, "partly sponsored by
NASA."

So while
it seemed reasonable to me at the time to abbreviate this into
"NASA-funded study", I recognise how not being specific on the nature
of this funding allowed other outlets to conflate the story into reports about
Nasa. I didn't exactly help by excitedly tweeting out all the headlines that
ensued, many of which simply stated "Nasa says", or "Nasa study
finds" blah blah - and a couple of times I got carried away and put out a
few tweets to the same effect myself. I went back and deleted those one or two
tweets I could find where I referred offhand to "Nasa study" in my
own words. As of today, the original Guardian article has been amended to more
clearly state the independent nature of the study and its relationship to Nasa.

Lessons
I've learned. Be specific, be clear. Don't RT uncritically - just because RT's
don't automatically equal endorsement, it can sure look like that to others.
And don't get yourself carried away in the tidal wave of media
self-replication.

Was the
HANDY model newsworthy?

Of
course the other issue is the credibility of the study, and of the HANDY model.
I stand by the scholarly importance of the study (see my expert source cited
below, a Stanford University sociologist) and in particular I stand by its news
value, which some have questioned on the basis that the study is some form of
'junk science'.

In fact,
a few people have been very, very unscrupulous in the way they've decided to
attack me, as well as attack this article. There are lessons to be learned on a
number of sides.

Keith
Kloor's insertion into this, backed up by his erstwhile blogger Robert Wilson (an
obscure research student of Mathematical Ecology who models Plankton), has been
an enlightening experience. I've been attacked, smeared, defamed and muddied
before online - so it's nothing new to me and not really a big deal. But when
that sort of behaviour ends up being effectively endorsed or carried out by a journalist who writes for a reputable science publication, and someone doing scientific research at a university, it deserves highlighting and
exposure.

Kloor
and Wilson

Both
Wilson and Kloor, together, seem to have an ideological aversion to reporting
of, or discussion around, peak oil, which recognises that the plateauing of
conventional oil production is in part responsible for escalating oil prices
which will be increasingly debilitating for economic growth - certainly as long
as we remain largely dependent on fossil fuels. Here, we find Wilson and Kloor
responding in the following manner to my story based on the work of a former BP
geologist, Richard Miller, who had just given an academic presentation at UCL
on oil and gas supply forecasting, and had also co-edited a recently released
special edition of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Royal Society B on oil
and energy issues:

Rather
than engaging with the actual arguments - arguments here which are not mine,
but those of Dr. Richard Miller and contributors to one of the most prestigious
journals in the world - Kloor and Wilson instead engage in some generic banter
to misrepresent me as a 'doomer'. As if the mere mention of a break on economic
growth due to looming energy challenges constitutes a forecast of doom (it
doesn't - it's known as "risk analysis")

I cite
this merely to indicate the kind of childish ad hominem attacks Kloor and
Wilson routinely indulge in, often together.

Kloor
then ran this piece highlighting my article on a
Nature Communications study documenting declining rate of growth in crop yields
in key food basket regions around the world. Once again rather than engaging
with the issues raised in the paper, Kloor wrote:

Equating
the thesis of my book and film with that of the Collapse movie
illustrates disinterest in simple fact-checking. Even the link to my film that
Kloor supplies explains further:

"The
film reveals how a failure to understand the systemic context of these crises,
linked to neoliberal ideology, has generated a tendency to deal not with their
root structural causes, but only with their symptoms. This has led to the
proliferation of war, terror, and state-terror, including encroachment on civil
liberties, while accelerating global crises rather than solving them...

The real
solution, Nafeez argues, is to recognise the inevitability of civilizational
change, and to work toward a fundamental systemic transformation based on more
participatory forms of living, politically, economically and culturally."

Only
someone functionally illiterate, plain dumb, or deliberately obtuse would interpret this as meaning that I predict unequivocal doom. And as these reviews indicate, my book, A User's Guide to the Crisis of
Civilization: And How to Save It, is ultimately optimistic in tone.

This
essentially seems to sum up how Kloor often deals with issues or subjects - or
people - that he disagrees with: character assassination, scorn, mockery etc.,
etc., but sadly, at least in my case, not much meaning argument, or
counter-evidence.

Kloor
and Wilson, however, hit a record when they apparently began collaborating on a
response to my part-Nasa-funded civilisational collapse story.

Faux
Modellers

In his
critique of this story, Kloor sets the tone by painting me as a 'doomer', and a
liar:

"Since joining the Guardian’s blogging network in
2013, Ahmed has carved out what I would call the doomsday beat... A good
example, of course, is the collapse paper he disingenuously hyped as
being 'NASA-sponsored.' (You’ll soon understand why that was deceptive.)"

Of
course, Kloor isn't actually in a position to know my motives, but goes ahead
and asserts a deliberate deception on my part in "hyping" a Nasa
link. Kloor then cites as his basis for further scepticism of the study itself,
and of my alleged "conspiratorial leanings", the following:

"There
were a couple of skeptical outliers, some folks who know about
mathematical models and were incredulous after reading both the study and
the Guardian story. One is Robert Wilson, a UK Mathematical Ecology PhD Student who wrote up his impressions at his
personal blog. Another is the U.S. science journalist David Appell, who offered his
thoughts on
the study’s model and (like Wilson) also took note of Ahmed’s conspiracy
theorist leanings."

The
first notable problem here is that, although Kloor cites Wilson and Appell as
if they are independent experts whose perspectives on the credibility of the
study's model is relevant, this is untrue. Although both Wilson and Appell have
academic experience of mathematical modelling, neither have any clue about
modelling in the context of social phenomena - see Wilson's and Appell's resumes. As said before,
Wilson models Plankton, and Appell worked as a physicist decades ago.

While
obviously there are overlaps, social modelling is a different ballgame, and
unless you've actually modelled sociological variables, you won't necessarily
get it. Attempting to model social and physical systems together is a specialised discipline that requires inputs of
expertise from both social and natural sciences. Someone who doesn't understand
this should simply be ignored. Kloor doesn't - he apparently seeks them out
purely because they back up his desire to lambast the HANDY model, regardless
of whether they actually have the relevant academic knowhow to comment.

9/11....
wtf?

Wilson's
first blogpost on the subject referenced by Kloor is a highly defamatory screed
replete with misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.

Like
Kloor, he opens with character assassination:

"I
cannot claim to know how much the Guardian pay their in house apocalypse
merchant Nafeez Ahmed, but I hope it is not much. Not really a regular
journalist, Mr. Ahmed runs the Earth Insight blog 'hosted' (does 'hosted' mean
the Guardian get the stuff for nothing?) by the Guardian. If your idea of
journalism is someone waking up each morning and then doing a Google Scholar
search and credulously reporting every piece of half-baked research that backs
up that journalist’s prejudices then Mr. Ahmed is your guy."

No
substance here except it's clear that Wilson, like Kloor, doesn't agree with my
take on things. He continues by claiming that I'm a 9/11 conspiracy theorist:

"Mr.
Ahmed spent a large part of the 2000s going around concocting conspiracy theories
about September 11th [update:
the link to Mr. Ahmed's crackpot conspiracy theories has been removed from his
website in the day since I posted this (you don't need to be a conspiracy
theorist to draw a conclusion). Fortunately you can still read it using
the archive.is website here.], telling us that the US
government was partly behind the whole thing. Back then he was doing the rounds of 9/11
truth conferences,
today, sadly, the Guardian has been foolish enough to give him a platform."

The post
Wilson links to is working now for anyone to peruse at their heart's desire.
After I realised that Wilson was using it to discredit my work, I archived it
temporarily as a sort of sociological experiment to test how Wilson and Kloor
would react, and whether either of them would demonstrate any
academic/journalistic integrity. As suspected, Wilson went bonkers with rather
embarrassing results, and Kloor eagerly followed him down the rabbit hole. In
almost every blogpost Wilson writes about me (many cited and tweeted by Kloor),
he references the "conspiracy" of the missing "9/11
conspiracy" article in an exercise of triumphant disclosure. It would be
funny, if it weren't so feeble.

I was
hoping that before promoting Wilson's allegations, Kloor would at least follow
his own advice re: 'fact checking' and 'journalism 101' - y'know, maybe drop me
an email or a call to find out the state of play. He didn't do that. Instead,
he preferred to drop conspiratorial insinuations about my deceptive nature (and
clearly ignored the tweet on 17th March where I'd actually publicly
acknowledged deleting the post precisely to annoy them):

So,
let's just get this non-issue out the way.

As
long-time readers of my work here will know, the idea that I'm a 9/11
conspiracy theorist is patently absurd - whether you agree or disagree with my arguments. As an international security scholar,
my first book, The War on Freedom, raised fundamental questions about the role
of US-UK foreign, defence, intelligence and other policies in facilitating the
activities of Islamist terrorist groups in the decades leading up to the 9/11
terrorist attacks, and on the day itself in relation to the emergency response of the national security system. The book was mandatory reading for
the 9/11 Commissioners, and was also used by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee
to inform their lines of inquiry in demanding an independent
investigation. My testimony in US Congress about my work related to my third
book, The War on Truth, was filmed by C-Span and can be viewed here.

Wilson
writes:

"anyone
familiar with Mr. Ahmed’s approach will note that he likes to put high emphasis
on credentials, in this case Nasa, as Christopher Hitchens delightfully
mocked here.)"

Unfortunately,
neither Wilson, nor Kloor who cites/tweets him so copiously, saw fit to do sufficient fact-checking to
identify my rebuttal of Hitchens in the Independent on Sunday, which pretty much demolishes
Hitchens while setting out my actual perspective on 9/11 quite clearly.

Along
these lines, in a separate blog post where Wilson declares -
"Fact checking however should never get in the way of a good story" -
he claims:

"However
trumping up credentials is something he is rather fond of. Just read the About
section of his personal website. There he gives a rather lengthy resume. This
includes a boast about how his work was discussed in Vanity Fair by Christopher
Hitchens. Hitchens however was not exactly praising Mr. Ahmed, instead he was
calling him a 'contemptible' man who concocts half-baked conspiracy theories.

Similarly
he talks about how his conspiracy theorist utterings about terrorist bombings
were 'used' by various investigations. By 'used' he means that he sent them a
copy of his work, which anyone is free to do. Whether they used them for
anything other than recycled paper is unclear."

Of
course, readers of my blog will note that Hitchens' description of me is
described right here on these pages on the right-hand side, six quotes down.
Yes right over there. Can you see it? This website wears that quote rather
proudly :) So much for fact-checking Mr Wilson (and Kloor).

The
inadequacy or non-existence of Wilson's research skills are on display again
when he suggests that the "use" of my work by various official
investigations is a fraud. In yet another post, he describes for me this reason
as an "intellectual charlatan" - that is even after someone called Gareth post in the comments the link (already on my bio) to the
National Archives in DC which lists the 9/11 Commission 'Special Collection' -
yes, a copy of my book is archived in DC as part of an official collection of
99 books that were "made available to members of the Commission to use
during its activities." If Wilson is unclear how these 99 books were
selected for 9/11 Commission investigators (no, they didn't read everything
they were sent in the post by random members of the public from around the
world), he should do a bit of journalism and fact-check it himself. Perhaps
call up the National Archives in DC?

*sigh*

The main
problem seems that Wilson's capacity for sociological or political analysis is
rather thin. He appears incapable of recognising the distinction between asking
questions on the basis of factual anomalies, and positing a theory. I've never
posited a "theory" about 9/11, least of all a "conspiracy
theory" - the most I've argued is that the US and the West's unsavoury
geopolitical relationship with Islamists over the last three or more decades has
functioned to impede intelligence agencies, and undermine national security, in
quite fundamental ways that dramatically increase the risk of terrorism at home
and abroad. I see no particular ideological reason why such questions shouldn't
be asked, if available evidence calls for it - without, however, getting
involved in spurious speculation (and indeed such questions were asked by the
9/11 Family Steering Committee in quite reasonable fashion).

Indeed, my
views about the sorry state of the so-called 9/11 "truth" movement
are well-known. I'm on record in a number of
places pointing out that simple physical anomalies cannot be used to justify
conclusions of a government conspiracy (for instance, see my observations in Channel 4's eye-opening documentary "Conspiracy - Who Really
Runs the World" on the WTC collapses, about 25 min in). So I kind of end
up pissing off basically everyone, 'troofers', 'anti-troofers', and a lot in
between.

But this
is the problem with people like Wilson and Kloor - their idea of "journalism 101" doesn't seem to
involve engaging directly and fully with people's actual writing/arguments, or
even speaking to them properly. If they disagree with it at face value, it must
be wrong, and it must be ridiculed. Fact-checking goes out the window.

Lies and
Ignorance

After
smearing me - a smear which Kloor repeats with reference to my alleged "conspiracy
leanings" - (which he also sources to David Appell, who however merely
references Wilson's blog) Wilson proceeds to 'dissect' my article:

"There
appears to be no evidence that the paper in question has been peer-reviewed.
Mr. Ahmed claims it has been accepted for publication by Ecological Economics. Yet, the paper is not on
the Ecological Economics website, although it is in submission.This kind of thing should be
unacceptable from a reputable newspaper like the Guardian."

Sadly,
Wilson didn't bother actually speaking to the authors of the study, as I had,
who had confirmed the paper's acceptance for publication and peer-review.

"... I do not model human civilization as my day job. Instead I model plankton.
If you want to do a half adequate job of modelling plankton populations you
will probably need more than eight equations. And I think humans are more
complex than plankton, but some times I have doubts.

A model
with this few equations will always provide egregious predictions about 'industrial
collapse'. Anyone who spends more than two minutes looking on Gapminder will
recognise that inter-country differences are so vast that using eight equations
to accurately model humanity is like replicating the Sistine Chapel using a
crayon."

Here,
Wilson's ignorance of the nature and purposes of social modelling is embarrassing
- equally so for Kloor's uncritical dependence on Wilson as one of his sources
of expert authority.

According
to Dr. Deborah S. Rogers of Stanford University's
Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, who is a leading expert in
modelling inequality and social stratification:

"Models do not prove hypotheses, nor do they replicate reality.
Rather, models are useful because they give us some insight into possible
mechanisms and possible consequences. These new insights, then, feed into the
iterative process of hypothesis-testing that underlies good science.

There is no problem with models that are 'simplistic' – they are supposed to
be. A model is an abstraction
from – a simplification of – reality. The objective is to see if you can understand
the essential mechanism(s) that drive the system, and what some possible
consequences of this mechanism might be. If the model results give you valuable
insights into certain real-world trends, then maybe you have managed to capture
the essence of the mechanism. If not, then you probably haven't, and you will
need to either revise your model or add components to it.

There is no particular value to making a model complex...you add just enough
complexity until you are convinced that you have captured the essence of the
mechanisms you are trying to understand. Meanwhile, it is fully acknowledged
that there are many other things also going on in reality, that are not
captured by the model...

Likewise,
a demography/resources model that predicts collapse given certain relationships
between the population and their resource base does not need to include the
complexities of political, economic and social adjustments made in response to
the situation. It merely shows us the possible outcomes, and leaves it to the
archaeologists, anthropologists, social scientists, political scientists,
economists, and policy-makers to debate the actual and hypothetical responses
to these possibilities, and how they altered (or will alter) the outcomes...

The
HANDY model finds that unequal populations collapse, although they apparently
attribute this to the lack of labor as the working class dies off. Again,
without commenting on the adequacy of the specifics of the HANDY formulation, I
find the simplicity of the model useful and the results plausible.
If we want to criticize the HANDY model, and by the same token our Spread of
Inequality model, let’s focus on the specific mechanisms that are postulated –
not on the simplicity of the model, and not on the lack of exact parallels with
past events."

This illustrates just how ridiculous and unscientific are the responses
of not just Wilson, but also Kloor's apparently partisan effort to discredit
the HANDY model.

But Wilson
doesn't stop there. He proceeds to misrepresent the paper as follows:

"Most
problematic is that they only model renewable resources. Modern civilization is
fundamentally dependent on the provision of non-renewable resources on a huge
scale."

This
characterisation of the paper is simply untrue. Either Wilson hasn't read the
paper properly, or wilfully misinterprets it to make his point. The paper says
(p. 7):

"In
reality, natural resources exist in three forms: nonrenewable stocks (fossil
fuels, mineral deposits, etc), regenerating stocks (forests, soils, animal
herds, wild fish stocks, game animals, aquifers, etc), and renewable ows (wind,
solar radiation, precipitation, rivers, etc). Future generations of the model
will disaggregate these forms. We have adopted a single formulation intended to
represent an amalgamation of the three forms, allowing for a clear
understanding of the role that natural resources play in collapse or
sustainability of human societies."

He then
ignores the study's reservations about technology in the context of carrying capacity:

"It
also assumes that there is a fixed carrying capacity for populations. Carrying
capacity itself is a deeply problematic concept. Think about Britain prior to
the Industrial Revolution. If Britain had attempted to power the Industrial
Revolution with wood it would have rapidly run out of trees. As Tony Wrigley
argued in his fine
book on the
subject the transition to coal allowed Britain to escape the limits of a purely
organic society. This makes it clear that this model, in its current form,
offers limited insights into whether civilization will persist over the twenty
first century."

But the
study itself takes note of the pace of technological progress
against the pace of resource consumption, with respect to a concept of carrying
capacity rooted precisely in our contemporary understanding of the earth's available
renewable, nonrenewable and renewable stocks. The transition from wood to coal
happening in the past, is no guarantee that a similar transition will
necessarily occur in the future. It might do, but that all depends on the
natural resources actually available, a factor the model at least attempts to
account for - a matter Wilson simply overlooks.

Kloor
attempts to dignify Wilson's feeble posts with the following recommendation
(among many others):

Following
this post, Wilson managed to generate upward of five further blog posts on the
grand old topic of little ol' me (within a space of about 24 hours I imagine...
scary). His last post is a slightly deranged discovery
of how I have been surreptitiously deleting tweets "to cover" my
"tracks." He didn't bother asking me about it - if he had, he
would've learned that deleting one's tweets can actually be a way of acknowledging and correcting inaccuracies once
recognised (which once again, I've acknowledged openly on Twitter).

I can't
claim to fully understand their motives - one can only guess. But it appears
that Wilson and Kloor are focused not on doing good journalism/scholarship to
explore a controversial issue, but on muddying journalism/scholarship to score
points on ideological and personal grounds. As my writing ranges over major
global challenges, crises and risks which they find unpalatable for whatever reason,
their approach appears to be one of simply defaming and slandering - to the
point of conspiratorially turning every triviality into hard evidence of
disingenuous deception. That much, it seems, has now been proven.

Yet both
pontificate like authorities on the standards of journalism and academic
research. Unfortunately, they seem to have little regard for either in practice.

8 comments:

Hullo Nafeez, the classic model of a socio-economic collapse, driven by resource hoarding by a parasitical elite, is Ireland on the eve of the "Great Famine", (Actually now described by revisionist academics as a genocide.) it fits the model perfectly. Late Czarism fits partially, but is more complex. But Ireland is the really good lab model. The HANDY morphology maps onto it astonishingly well. It gives aa major insight. Why my mentioning of the Famine?....it lays the blame where it should, on the genocidal, colonialist occupation of the Country and the resulting crisis 350 years after the onslaught on the Irish people began. That's the point your detractors hate, as intellectually limited "American Exceptionalists". Apply HANDY to the giant neo-liberal, neo-con experiment on the American State, and you get uncomfortable answers. Bush is a symptomatic operant, and head of the American "Nomenclatura" who can be profiled rather well in terms of where he maps onto HANDY as a vector and a factor. Interesting. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a towering intellectual giant actually understood these issues, as did many of the Senatorial class. Contrast this with the sheer ignorance of the present American elite. "Handy mapping" is a very interesting tool for looking at what is going on in the present Western Civilization, and where it is leading. Combine this with classical Marxist dialectics, and you have workable tools. Your American critics are rather sharper than there rulers. They know and understand where analysis of this kind leads. It has to be stamped on.Whether or not it is true, is utterly irrelevant. Keep writing!!

Responding to the prolific disinformation of people like Kloor is a full-time job. Perhaps their objective is partially to discredit you, but more broadly to side-track you, create a giant time suck so that you're reporting less on what matters, and spending more and more time responding to shills and their disinformation. Seems to be working, Nafeez.

presumably you are referring to this post http://www.nafeezahmed.com/2009_02_01_archive.html where I referenced a Times report (now paywalled) which - at the time- showed that: "Even Sweden, which had once declared its intent to become the world's first oil-free economy, is now scrapping its plans to invest in renewable energy technologies to build costly nuclear plants."

You seem to be unaware that we inhabit a world in which time actually passes, politics happens, among other events, and circumstances change. In 2010, Sweden overturned its nuclear phase-out policy fully, but as doubts have grown over the efficiacy of nuclear power, the policy has also evolved. Now, years on, no doubt partly influenced by the travesty of Fukishima, Sweden has pulled back from heavy reliance on nuclear. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/5/30/policy-politics/sweden-favours-renewables-nuclear-interview

These are simple checkable facts. Rather than check them, you come here and cast stones while offering no substantive critique. This is a very sad reflection of the state of dialogue on energy issues at the moment. Extreme polarisation, pointless ad hominem, and needless vilification.

"You don't have the same expertise as Wilson, in mathematical modelling of populations, that might allow to judge the value of an, as yet, unpublished hypothesis. That didn't stop you."

You know nothing about my expertise. Nor Wilson's, clearly - Wilson has no knowledge at all of "modelling of populations" - unless you consider plankton equal to humans (Wilson admits to falling into this trap occasionally. Hell, if I were him, I probably would too).

As for the paper, it's now a matter of public record (which I'd already confirmed in my original report) that the paper had been accepted for publication in a leading peer-reviewed Elsevier science journal, and it is indeed due to be published in April.

"Perhaps, like me, Kloor and Wilson are irritated when reporting is hijacked to spout deep green propaganda."

So my reporting is "hijacked", but Kloor's and Wilson's abject and repeated resort to open defamation, slander, and mud-slinging constitutes "journalism 101" (to quote the great Kloor himself).

Indeed: I think Keith Kloor's journalistic brilliance is on full-display above. I've surely done him a service in collating this brilliance all on one page for all journalists to learn from in decades to come.

It is a shame that intellectuals are so often drawn into adversarial exchanges, when it is clear that we live in a world that cannot afford to have those seeking understanding and solutions to complex problems distracted from activism, science, journalism and thoughtful commentary. It really is a lot simpler to seek common ground, and to make an effort to comprehend more and to argue less.

My reference to this quote is Senator Sam Erwin during the Watergate hearings. He is reputed to have said, "Never explain. Your friends won't need it and your enemies won't believe it."

The world is full of second-string "academics" struggling against incompetence to gain tenure and promotion. The world is full of shills, trolls, snarks and (Wow! Add about a thousand names here). Fuggedaboudum! They will always be there and they will always be making ad hominem arguments, asserting counter-factual propositions and drawing inappropriate, erroneous or downright silly conclusions. Fuggedaboudum!

While I may disagree with you on some points, reasonable people can disagree civilly and responsibly. It's called the search for truth and in some cases through the magical metaphysics of Hegelian synthesis, we may find a resolution that enriches us both.

The people you have spent so much energy rebutting, hardly deserve the time spent on them. Keep on keeping on, brother. Some of us have got your back.

Aren't you embarrassed to commit this amount of time justifying what you know is nonsense? Self-promote all you want, get your hits, get published, but don't waste your time trying to justify it to people who are not and never will be fooled. There is no intellectual argument here to win. They know what you are, and so do you.

Acclaim

"International security analyst and consultant who has spent much time looking at how environmental risks and terrorism threaten our eco-security and well-being." -- The Evening Standard's 1000 most influential Londoners 2014

"Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don’t – particularly about what we are up to" -- Gore Vidal, The Observer

"Ahmed is that rare breed of journalist who finds stories everyone else either misses or chooses to overlook; he regularly joins up the dots in a global system of corporate pillage... a voice from the genuine left, and one too independent to control" -- Jonathan Cook, former Guardian columnist and foreign desk editor

"If you still need something to worry about, how about a grand conflagration of climate, financial, energy, food, and civil-liberties crises, which might destroy the world as we know it before the century is out?... Forceful and well sourced" -- Steven Poole, The Guardian

"Lucid and persuasive account of how our security mandarins talked themselves into believing we could make quiet, backroom deals with terrorists" -- Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

"Disturbing and clearly evidenced... Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed traces the unholy games played with Islamist terrorists by the US, and through acquiescence by the UK, flirting with them when it suited and then turning against them" -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

"Respected terror analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed pulls apart the official narrative of 7/7, pointing out its gaps and contradictions... The authorities seem to be unable to answer many of the most basic questions about the 7/7 bombings ... it has taken a study by an academic outsider, Ahmed, to assess the extent of the bombers’ international terrorist connections." -- Editorial, Independent on Sunday

"One of the most illuminating voices in the British media" -- Rob Hopkins, founder, Transition Towns movement

"Nafeez Ahmed’s understanding of the post 9/11 power game, its lies, illusions and dangers, is no less than brilliant. Everyone should read this wise and powerfully illuminating book." -- John Pilger, Emmy and BAFTA award-winning journalist

"I wish every American who still believes in the good intentions of our government would read this book. Drawing upon his impressive research into recent history, Nafeez Ahmed skilfully exposes the real motives behind the 'war on terrorism' and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq." -- Howard Zinn

"Nafeez Ahmed demonstrates brilliantly that the war on freedom is inseparable from the war on truth." -- Vandana Shiva

"As carefully laid out and sourced as one could want... I find the author's argument that the US, the UK, and France, among others, have been actively using terrorists, nurturing terrorists, as part of a geopolitical and economic strategy, and that in their naiveté they nurtured a force they cannot control today, to be completely credible" -- Robert D. Steele, founding Deputy Director, US Marine Corps Intelligence Command

"An impressive study of key crises confronting our civilization... a unique attempt to demonstrate their systematic interconnections... Ahmed is very deliberately a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scholar... Throughout, [he] draws convincingly and commandingly on a number of fields, including climate sciences, geology, monetary and financial economics, and systems theory, among many others" -- Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

"A powerful and convincing account of how our civilization is threatened by a system of crises... [Ahmed] clearly and directly explains that, while the impact of each of these crises is great, we can only understand their true impact and how to potentially solve or mitigate them as a system" -- The Oil Drum (Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future)

About this blog

"posits that in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so."

Deep political analysis digs

"beneath public formulations of policy issues to the bureaucratic, economic, and ultimately covert and criminal activities which underlie them."

(Peter Dale Scott, University of California, Berkeley)

On this blog, I engage in deep political analysis in the context of the Crisis of Civilization – the convergence and escalation of environmental degradation, species extinctions, climate change, energy depletion, food crisis, water shortages, economic/financial instability, inequality/poverty, religious/political extremism, moral confusion, mental illness, and finally, philosophical/epistemological vacuity. As these crises systemically converge and accelerate, Civilization continues to respond largely with denial, guaranteeing a business-as-usual trajectory toward worst case scenarios. The only viable alternative is to respond through direct confrontation with that which has been suppressed.